The 12 days of GCHQ quizmas: test your brain power with these daily puzzles

Reading this will make you smarter (but only if you expect it to)

This article was first published in the April 2016 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

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A host of provocative studies have suggested that we can be primed to behave a certain way when exposed to relevant cues. For example: researchers found that while people were wearing a lab coat - a type of clothing often associated with smart scientists - they scored better on analytical tests. Another team found that after being asked to hold a warm drink, people apparently viewed others more warmly. After seeing a picture of a library, people spoke more softly. When typically French music was played in a supermarket (Édith Piaf accompanied by an accordion, perhaps), shoppers bought more French wine. And so on.

The results of these experiments are interesting to contemplate. And they would seem to lay out a checklist for how you should make the most of each day: put on a lab coat and dunk inspirational objects in your piping-hot cup of coffee. Sadly, it's not that easy. Researchers are wildly divided on how these results are obtained - in particular, whether the influence is conscious or unconscious, whether it's strong enough to really change someone's behaviour, and whether it can be reliably replicated. In fact, priming is one of the areas where the "replication crisis" in psychological research has been particularly fierce.

That doesn't mean the effects are fake, though. When psychologist Daniel Kahneman raised the replication issue in priming research in 2012, he called himself a "general believer". After all, there's little argument about the associative nature of the brain's connections, meaning that being reminded of one thing can lead us to think, feel or do something else that we associate with the original prompt. We get a glimpse of these stored associations when we're daydreaming and notice that our thoughts have leapt from topic to topic as one idea leads to another, or when we smile as we hear a song that reminds us of good times.

The challenge arises when we believe it's possible to prime someone else to behave a certain way by merely exposing them to a particular cue. After all, everyone has different associations in their brains. So music that lifts my mood might make you wince. A warm drink is less likely to make people behave warmly in a sweltering climate. Perhaps your favourite raucous hangout is called The Library Bar. And in the study mentioned above, when people were told that the white coat belonged to a painter rather than a scientist, their test scores fell. Context matters.

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But we can be smarter about knowing what associations we personally have with our most productive or upbeat states of mind - and we can be more deliberate about surrounding ourselves with triggers that might nudge us back towards those states of mind. Maybe there's a window seat where you once did great work - so, sure, why not seek out that seat the next time you want to be on your game? It's not going to guarantee brilliance, but at the margin it might just help. Perhaps clearing your desk really does help to clear your head. And your "lucky underpants"? Well, as long as they remind your brain of a time when you got lucky, maybe they will make you more confident in your next interview.

Caroline Webb is CEO of Sevenshift and the author of How to Have a Good Day (Macmillan)